Home Health Costs Topics

Health Costs

The MIDTERMS

“...the search for a single top issue through polling questions — whether it’s health costs, or gas prices, or the cost of food — is artificial. People worry about and experience these costs together. There is no top issue, unless that issue is the catchall, ‘cost of living.’” — Drew Altman, KFF Founding President and CEO

Are Health Care Costs THE Top Issue for Voters?

In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, Founding President and CEO, analyzes the polling on health costs as a voting issue and concludes that there is no one top voting issue. He writes: “I have come to the conclusion that the search for a single top issue through polling questions—whether it’s health costs, or gas prices, or the cost of food—is artificial. People worry about and experience these costs together. There is no top issue, unless that issue is the catchall, “cost of living.”

New and noteworthy

How Unaffordable is Health Care and What Can We Do About It?

Event Date:

On Tuesday, July 21, three experts joined Health Wonk Shop series moderator Larry Levitt in an hour-long discussion of health care affordability. During the discussion, panelists considered affordability from a variety of perspectives, including how to define affordability and the question of affordability for whom, how to measure it, and what can be done to address affordability and the underlying cost of health care.

Health System Tracker

Among adults 18 - 64 with private insurance, mental health and substance use treatment accounted for 10% of all overnight stays at hospitals or other medical facilities in 2023.

Cost and Utilization of Inpatient Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment This analysis describes the most common diagnoses for inpatient treatment and total associated costs.

What Are the Recent Trends in Employer-Based Health Coverage? Employer-sponsored health insurance is the largest source of health coverage for people under 65, but its reach is uneven.

How Does U.S. Life Expectancy Compare to Other Countries? The life expectancy gap between the U.S. and peer countries decreased from 4.1 years in 2023 to 3.7 years in 2024 as U.S. mortality dropped.

How Does Health Spending in the U.S. Compare to Other Countries? While the U.S. still spends the most in total dollars, eight OECD nations had a higher percentage increase in per-person health spending in 2024.

Latest News

More KFF Health News

Stay informed.

Get KFF's latest on Health Costs

Stay informed.

Get KFF's latest on Health Costs

View the Latest: Health Costs

Filter

List Grid

181 - 190 of 1,602 Results

  • What the Outcome of the Election Could Mean for Medicaid

    Issue Brief

    This brief examines the two presidential candidates’ records and other recent policy proposals that could inform starkly different directions for the program across key areas, including Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion, financing, eligibility, benefits, and cost-sharing, prescription drugs, long-term services and supports, and managed care.

  • Pulling it Together: 2012: The ACA, and More

    From Drew Altman

    What is remarkable about 2012 (and the current era in health policy) is how many big health policy issues and marketplace changes will be in play at the same time: HEALTH REFORM: There is the implementation of a historic but fragile health reform law, with a Supreme Court decision pending and so much hanging in the balance. MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: There are continuing debates about potentially big changes in Medicare and Medicaid, driven by the…

  • Chartpack: Kaiser Health Tracking Poll — August 2009

    Poll Finding

    This document contains the chartpack from the August Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted August 4 through August 11, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews conducted by landline (801) and cell phone (402, including 123 who had no landline telephone) were carried out in English and Spanish. The margin of…

  • Pulling it Together: When Premiums Go Up 39%

    Perspective

    Our group that works on health care cost issues just updated an analysis that sheds light on what’s really happening to people in the individual health insurance market, the issue Secretary Sebelius, a former Kansas insurance commissioner, and others have put in the spotlight by calling on Anthem and other insurance companies to account for their proposed high premium increases. The analysis shows that people buying health insurance on their own in the individual market…

  • Pulling it Together: An Actuarial Rorschach Test

    Perspective

    Drew Altman, Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton My colleagues have worked on this column with me and I invited them to join me as authors. As with pretty much every other discussion of health care going back to the days of Roosevelt, the great reform debate of 2009 (and now 2010) has been distilled into an ideological battle over the role of government. A government-sponsored "public option" has been off the table for a while now,…

  • Key Findings: Kaiser Health Tracking Poll — August 2009

    Poll Finding

    This document contains the key findings from the August Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted August 4 through August 11, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews conducted by landline (801) and cell phone (402, including 123 who had no landline telephone) were carried out in English and Spanish. The margin…

  • To Hospitalize or Not to Hospitalize? Medical Care for Long-Term Care Facility Residents

    Report

    To Hospitalize or Not to Hospitalize? Medical Care for Long-Term Care Facility Residents This report explores factors that appear to drive relatively high rates of hospitalizations, based on interviews with doctors, nursing home staff and families in four cities. Key factors include liability concerns, limited onsite staff capabilities, difficulty reaching residents' physicians for care instructions on nights and weekends, better and more timely access to diagnostic tests in hospitals, and patient preferences. Physicians with patients…

  • Private Insurers Expect to Pay $1 Billion in Rebates to Consumers This Year for Setting Premiums Too High Relative to Medical Costs

    News Release

    Private insurance companies are expecting to pay out $1 billion in rebates to consumers this fall under an Affordable Care Act provision that requires insurers to spend the bulk of customers’ premium payments on care, a new KFF analysis finds. Rebates are based on insurers’ experiences over the previous three years. This year’s total is roughly half the size of last year’s $2 billion, in part because 2021 was a less profitable year and because…